Both the Nebraska Department of Corrections and the Nebraska Attorney General's office confirmed Wednesday that they had recently received letters from the federal Food and Drug Administration requesting the drug, sodium thiopental, be turned over to federal authorities.

Neither spokeswomen for the corrections department nor the attorney general's office could say whether the state planned to turn over its supply of the drug, which the state obtained from a foreign supplier.

The order follows a federal judge's ruling late last month that the FDA wrongly allowed other states to import the drug. The judge also ordered the FDA to immediately notify any state correctional departments with foreign-manufactured thiopental to turn it over to the FDA.